Job cuts at Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced that it is looking for 198 employees to take voluntary redundancy before the end of the year.The job cuts will take place across all three of JLR’s UK plants, which employ around 16,000 staff altogether, and will come mostly from hourly-paid contract staff rather than full-time salaried employees. Staff are being offered nine months pay as incentive to leave, plus standard pension if they’re eligible.Don Hume, director for JLR corporate and governmental affairs, told Autocar that the decision “is more to do with our ongoing drive for efficiency rather than the credit crunch.”JLR, now owned by Tata, has already taken action as a result of the economic slow down. Land Rover’s Solihull plant has gone to a four day week and Jaguar’s Halewood factory is due to stop production for a week at the end of October due to falling X-Type sales.

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Didn't TATA promise there would be no job cuts in the immediate future? I suppose they will get around this by saying 'voluntary' redundancies dont count. Seems like a small figure considering they have 16,000 employees. I suspect more 'resignations' to come...

Contract staff are classified very differently to full time salaried staff. They are generally self employed and work on a six or twelve month basis. Getting rid of them is normally fairly easy as it is done on a rolling basis when their contract comes up for renewal.

In this particular situation I would guess JLR want to terminate their contracts early, so whilst not strictly redundancies, they are trimming their work force. Strictly TATA are being good to their word.

Teg mate, you're right re. the employment contract situation and what Quattro said before. But see the bigger picture here. JLR are stuffed. Land Rover's sales are down nearly 30% YTD in Europe(50% in Sep.). N.America is even worse. They've stopped publishing sales figures(last N.A. figs., July -60%). The boss Davis Smith met Brown last week to basically beg for a bailout, major cash in plain parlance. The parent company Tata Motors is up to its neck with the fiasco over the Nano. There's no way they will bail JLR, even if they had the dough; far easier to browbeat a muppet like Brown to shell out tens, probably hundreds of millions of UK taxpayer money - what's good for the bankers and hedge funders is good for corporate bosses. This is serious sh1t, and goes far beyond 198 non-renewed contract hire staff. JLR are bleeding cash, employing people week after week to sweep floors or sit in rest areas, can't go on. They are essentially a smaller version of the American Big Three - going nowhere fast. Their best hope is to get state cash handout, fast, using the initial 200 job cuts as a pressure builder for their pleas to government. 'Help us - major dough - now or we'll be forced to announce real, sweeping cuts just in time for the Glenrothes by-election and the Christmas shopping period'. It's a sh1tty business but I guarantee this is what's going down right now.